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The Need for Human Skills in AI-Driven Talent Strategy.

Vijay Swaminathan

min read

12 January 2026

I hope you're doing well. Our holiday reflections primarily focused on how best to get the most out of the super-intelligent machines that Enterprises are targeting to build in 2026 and beyond. Between Narrow AI and AGI, various initiatives are underway (some at scale) within enterprises. Many aspects remain unknown. However, human interaction and the skills required to operate these machines will become crucial. Just look at this phenomenon. At the beginning of 2025, we thought AI could entirely handle email writing. The formatting and the speed of AI writing machines like ChatGPT enamoured us. However, by December 2025, we observe within 10 seconds of reading the email that the sender used AI and that no original thinking is involved. From Enamorment we went to Dismay.

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In the book Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (Kissinger, Schmidt, and Huttenlocher, 2024), there is a powerful paragraph.

“Humans have long desired to extend the range of what we can observe to both the very tiny and the very far. The microscope and the telescope are quintessential tools of human observation. Less appreciated is the humble pen. Writing, invented four thousand years ago, remains an outstanding tool for the codification and transmission of complexity. That includes mathematics, perhaps the purest and most universal of human languages, and enough in itself to facilitate the transfer of abstruse ideas and collaboration on technological projects. On a per-byte basis, language in all its multifarious and beautiful forms is unusually dense—among the most efficient data structures that have been invented.”

This shows what we thought AI would completely disrupt will slowly emerge as Indisruptible skills (Writing skill is one powerful example)

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Samuel Butler is best known for his novel Erewhon, which contains one of the earliest serious discussions about the evolution of machines. In a famous section, “The Book of the Machines,” Butler argued that machines evolve much like biological organisms—becoming more complex, more autonomous, and increasingly indispensable to humans. His core concern was not that machines would become intelligent overnight, but that humans might gradually cede agency, judgment, and purpose to them.

The term "Cede-Agency" is one that we, who are involved in the enterprise's skills development and preparation, must consider. We have identified a set of verification skills that are particularly necessary for SWP and TA professionals. These skills are not necessarily tech stack skills, which we have addressed in many papers. These are the root skills for working effectively with Machines. Let us dive deeper into this.

We hope you find this paper useful as you return from your holidays and get back to your projects. Wish you all a very successful 2026

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